From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 23:49:47 MST
Damien writes
> Looks interesting. Here's a UK review by philosopher Mary Midgley:
>
> http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,904442,00.html
"Free will is an evolved creation of human activity and beliefs, and it is just as real as such other creations as music and
money... Recognising our uniqueness as reflective, communicating animals does not require any 'human exceptionalism' that must shake
a defiant fist at Darwin... We may thus concede that material forces ultimately govern behaviour, and yet at the same time reject
the notion that people are always and everywhere motivated by material self-interest."
As [Dennett] points out, educated people today are often trapped in a strange kind of double-think on this topic. Officially, they
believe physical science calls for determinism, which proves they have no control over their lives. But in actual living, most of
the time they assume they do have this control.
Well, would anyone expect less from Dennett? He's always
had such an effortless grasp of the essentials. He and
Pinker form today's Dynamic-Duo, in my opinion. (Not that
I find this review especially hard-hitting or to the point
---see next---but I have confidence that Dennett's book
will be on target.)
I think that the people who deny the existence of free
will simply don't completely understand how extremely
mechanical the universe is. They seem to entertain,
somehow, the possibility of uncaused actions, of freedom
from mechanism. It's as if they find the idea of a soul
conceivable. Of course there can be no such thing, and
real free will naturally has nothing to do with such
ludicrous fantasies.
Free will exists because it's possible for decisions to
be made. A computer program instantly recognizable to
us as being totally and fully determined nonetheless
merrily calculates away, letting all the proper influences
affect its decisions. And so do we, and in just the same way!
The absence of free will corresponds to compelled behavior:
you've chosen to do one thing, and someone else holds a gun
to your head forcing you to do something else.
As Pinker himself said in a Stanford lecture a few months
ago, we easily see that free will exists by noticing that
people's behavior is affected when you hold them accountable
for their actions. That's the whole key. Get it? "Whose
actions!?" Their actions!
Lee
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